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Your Letters

Unsure about Voice

Voice initially sounded like a really good idea. Unfortunately, it has not turned out to be such a good thing for the following four reasons:

1. Not loggable. If someone is abusing text based chat, people can turn the individual in and they can be dealt with. This is not the case for voice chat. It is almost impossible to tell who was (past tense) acting inappropriately. This limits the ability of in-world Residents to report breaches of conduct.
2. Abusive language in public places. With the inability to report abuses and the lack of a police force, people are bringing abusive behavior to public places. I hang out at the help island infohub quite often to assist newbies. Unfortunately, there has been an increasing use of abusive chatter among some immature users. I feel this detracts from the initial experience for new users. They deserve a chance to get rooted before they should have to deal with bad elements.
3. Inability to maintain 'PG' status. Unfortunately, multiple uses of curse words does not fit the definitions of 'PG'. However, there is no way to police for that on voice chat. Text chat can be policed.
4. Personal reason: It detracts from the 'magic'. When I read a book, I imagine how the characters sound. The same is true for SL. Text chat is no different than a book. However, voice chat effectively ruins the magic.
5. Fragmentation of communities: Yes, voice solves the problem of text entry for non-English speaking people. However, it also makes translation near impossible. Currently, there is some non-English chatter in text, but it can be translated. However, voice chat cannot be translated.
6. Role play: For those that do gender or age play, it is most certainly a serious step backward.

I do have to concede that voice chat is ideal for certain activities like sermons at church and personalized instruction where gender play in not involved. It most likely will be rolled out. However, I will have mine in listen only mode, and that just so that I can address the issue of harassment via voice, the newbies deserve better.

-Anonymous

Not a Voice Fan

It's an awful idea. I have no doubt it will be implemented to the rolling eyes of the majority of the community, but I don't see it making anything better. I can see frustration, resentment, annoyance, and larger technical difficulties in the future.

I enjoy Second Life, but not as much as I used to. New features aren't essential. I would focus on fixing existing ones and stop banning things that brought people there in the first place. A censured SL is only appreciated by those who wouldn't play in SL anyway. I know there are bad seeds, but slowly encroaching on any freedoms just leads to further encroachment. I know my opinion doesn’t really matter, but the eventual SSN for age verification and banning wagering is going to cost SL a lot of people. And I hate that because meeting new people is what's so great about SL. Just my two cents. Sorry for the long rant.

- Daxton Briggs

On the Fence about Voice

Thank you for your thoughtful article. It is clear that Voice will bring advantages in some situations. I will not be able to ignore it, however, and I can see more disadvantages than benefits for my experience of Second Life.

I remain uncomfortable with Voice because I believe it will pull Real Life too far into Second Life, harming the fragile illusion that I am truly in a different world. I also worry that it will add a new dimension to incivility. Typed chat slows conversation down and gives people valuable extra seconds to think before they blurt out foul language and unkind comments. These are personal concerns, though, and they say more about me than they do about Voice.

My greater concern is practical. A lot of my conversations take place where six or more people are "talking" at once. It is common for me to have simultaneous conversations with two or three of them, plus another one or two in IM. I can keep things straight in typed chat by scrolling back in history if I need to, but this will be impossible with Voice. Babbler and the chat log are crucial in a multilingual crowd, so I am particularly worried about the many conversations I have with international visitors. Working in a public area, I do not have the luxury of simply disabling Voice. I will be faced with yet another layer of complexity as I deal with simultaneous typed chat, IM, and Voice. I see chaos ahead.

- Rolig Loon

Thanks, but No Thanks

The addition of voice can be a big benefit to some of the community, especially the teaching and meeting community. But even there it introduces new problems because if you miss something you cannot go back to the chat or IM history to see what was said.

I do not know if any of the current Grid problems are related to the introduction of voice, but that is the overall assumption. People are selling their land, cashing out and leaving SL. If this continues then I do not see SL surviving in its present form. Take a look at what happened to 'There' when they introduced voice. It became a wasteland of statues standing around doing nothing.

Most of the Roleplay people don't want voice for reasons that have been stated over and over many times. I will add my voice to the objectors, but there is no need to go into detail.

There's also some weird assumption that everyone will buy good quality headsets to stop background noise and feedback. Wrong! The majority will probably use a $9.99 from Wal Mart or, even worse desktop speakers and a clip on or desktop mic. After all, this is what is usually bundled with most new PC's.

My last complaint is the Chatterbox window. This is awful! I want to be able to follow the local chat conversation and also IM at the same time. Switching between the tabs is cumbersome and unacceptable. I hate to think how people running businesses are going to cope. They probably will not, and end up shutting shop. And oh yes, and has been stated 100's of times before, it takes up too much space on the screen.

Voice is a good idea, but not if it is detrimental to 90% of your users.

- Torian Carter